You're Not Alone, Even If You Feel Like a "Lone Wolf"

Lone Wolf Syndrome.


Came up the other day with a client during an #EmployeeExperience (EX) Design Session. Actually, of the 8 people around the table, 5 raised it as a core element of their EX.

While for many organizations, the EX is deemed to be the cumulative experience of culture, technology and physical workspace (see Forbes piece here), for others those concepts are simply too lofty.

Absolutely, there is an imperative for organizations to monitor and evolve those three elements - but if waiting for change at the 10,000 foot level is the only approach to managing the EX, then transformation will be glacial; top talent attrition more imminent.

If waiting for change at the 10,000 foot level is the only approach to managing the EX, then transformation will be glacial; top talent attrition more imminent.

So, now back to our lone wolves.

As part of our EX Design Session, we did indeed collect and synthesize feedback for executive leadership around culture, tech, and space. But we quickly moved from there into an interactive planning session around opportunities to enhance the EX from the ground up.

The key question being - within our framework of Activating the EX - what are the changes that I (the individual employee) could make, or begin to make, immediately that would enhance my day-to-day experience of contributing, innovating, collaborating and simply extracting more joy from my work?

Related: Why Change Should Always Start At the Top ... Except For When It Shouldn't

And fixing the Lone Wolf experience topped the list for this particular team.

Lone Wolf Syndrome is common, deflating, and frankly pretty easy to fix (in increments). This team aligned on a set of behavioral commitments that would enhance their connectivity, their shared learning (both from experts as well as P2P learning), their frequency of brainstorming and best practice sharing and more.

Note these tweaks are simple. And while they will take an investment of time, the payoff is well worth it. Let transformation ensue.

How can you begin to empower your team to design their own EX? What tiny increments of change can you unleash from the ground up?